Justin Bieber Super Fun Ableton Pack

Justin Bieber 'R' Us? Have you been to a toy store lately? This holiday season I was shopping for an adorable little nephew (the same little guy responsible for the inspiration behind my Guitar Harmonics Synth Ableton Live Pack) when I came across the musical toy section of the store. Right away I was struck by the ocean of Justin Bieber merchandise. Action figures, outfits for the action figures, microphones, posters, life-sized cardboard cutouts, you name it, it was all there. After picking my jaw up off the floor, I started to get a picture of the massive marketing and merchandising that goes behind a pop star of Justin Bieber's caliber. Unbelievable! The wildest part about it was that most of it was sold out. People are totally eating up the young man with the second largest Twitter following in the world (number one is Lady Gaga with her Little Monsters). Being the sound design-explorer I am, I'm sure you can imagine my excitement when my girlfriend came home from work with her Secret Santa gift, the Wowwee Paper Jamz Justin Bieber Keyboard Guitar! Sample time :) Upon opening it up, I was a little surprised at how involved it was for a toy. It has drum sounds, a synth, a bunch of really short Justin Bieber vocal samples, and a couple of his songs that you can play along to. Now don't get me wrong, it's not a professional instrument or anything, the sounds are probably equivalent to an MP3 at 64 kbps, but I found them to be quite useful in a charming lo-fi way. So, I sampled the bejesus out of this thing and am here to share it with you, The Justin Bieber Super Fun Pack!

Open up this Ableton Live Pack and you get a total of four different racks to play around with! First is a synth created by sampling the Justin Bieber synth. I've augmented the original's capabilities by giving you easy access to the Flanger effect that comes built in, there are controls to play around with Sampler's morph filter. The knob labeled "Crowd noise" is Sampler's Shaper control being added to the sound. The Zone Shifter knob alters which of the samples are being used, and doing so alters the overall timbre of the instrument. I've thrown on a vocoder effect to add some nice noises, and a delay set to repitch mode to enhance those noises. The result is a dirty ambient sounding synth.

I've also sampled the drum sounds that come with the toy. There are only three, but I've made a drum rack with two of each sound. The last three sounds are the same sounds except they are housed within the Impulse instrument. What's cool about Impulse is that it allows you to stretch the samples, and that is exactly what the "4-6 Stretch" macro knob does. Aside from some bit crushing and reverb, I also threw on a Resonator effect. The drums themselves lack much bottom end, so this knob allows you add in some sub frequencies.

The next track you'll find in the Justin Bieber Super Fun Ableton Live Pack is a drum rack containing the Justin Bieber vocal samples. "Hey girl" "Lez go" "OOOoooOOOooOO" they are all here. You can play around with the tuning of them by using the "Transpose" knob, and further alter them using the other macro knobs. If you like this slicing preset, the next track has that the template, which you can save to your Ableton Library/Defaults/Slicing Folder so you can use it anytime you use the "Slice to Midi" function.

The audio tracks that follow contain the stems of a quick chill-wave-type track I made using only the Justin Bieber Keyboard Guitar as a sound source (listen below). I fashioned some hi hat sounds, used the drums, made a synth pad sound, used a couple of Bieber samples that happen to be in key, and then made a higher melody using the synth. I decided to include the audio files here to encourage all you remixers out there to get your hands dirty and remix this bad boy. Send it to me via SoundCloud or email, and I will post it and give you a little free promo :)

Big thanks to Daryl and Carl for knowing that this would be the ultimate Secret Santa gift :)

AfroDJMac is the work of Brian Funk, a New York-based musician, producer, and Ableton Certified Trainer. He's a writer, podcaster, and curious sound designer who loves to share his knowledge about music production and the creative process.